by CuDubh » Wed May 30, 2018 4:17 am
Chris--
Reference? I am a bit doubtful. In any case not statistically or geologically meaningful, because ALL rocks, of any origin, become much scarcer with time, due to plate tectonics and erosion. The smaller and younger craters, which are heavily over-represented in the "confirmed" category, because of their (and our) youth, tend to be the first to go.
It is well known that impacts with some possibly quite important ups and downs have declined significantly (exponentially?) in terms of energy with time, as solar system has generally sorted itself out (except for the possibility of periodic peripheral disruption). Late Heavy Bombardment was 17-19 times older than Manicouagan. Sudbury (not that far away, and not that old, being merely Proterozoic), is still roughly an order of maginitude older (~1849 my./~214 my. = ~8.6). And that was a much larger event.
Manicouagan is well into the Phanerozoic (from Greek for "visible, evident life"). Dinosaurs were around, and if not for a bit of bad subsequent luck, might be having this conversation. Phanerozoic is very small portion of Earth's history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanerozoic
still a great APOD, was just trying to do a little fact-checking here.
Chris--
Reference? I am a bit doubtful. In any case not statistically or geologically meaningful, because ALL rocks, of any origin, become much scarcer with time, due to plate tectonics and erosion. The smaller and younger craters, which are heavily over-represented in the "confirmed" category, because of their (and our) youth, tend to be the first to go.
It is well known that impacts with some possibly quite important ups and downs have declined significantly (exponentially?) in terms of energy with time, as solar system has generally sorted itself out (except for the possibility of periodic peripheral disruption). Late Heavy Bombardment was 17-19 times older than Manicouagan. Sudbury (not that far away, and not that old, being merely Proterozoic), is still roughly an order of maginitude older (~1849 my./~214 my. = ~8.6). And that was a much larger event.
Manicouagan is well into the Phanerozoic (from Greek for "visible, evident life"). Dinosaurs were around, and if not for a bit of bad subsequent luck, might be having this conversation. Phanerozoic is very small portion of Earth's history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanerozoic
still a great APOD, was just trying to do a little fact-checking here.